Polish climbers already in the database under k2 (5 300 m). All healthy. “home” for the next month. And in pl we still have our up for 35 days:

K2 – the dream of climbers from around the world, the most difficult opponent, with which it came to measure climbers high altitude in winter conditions, and – so far – only a eight-thousander unassailable winter …

The word has been said, so once again, tirelessly – and no less ambition than a year ago – we move to the summer and then winter conquest of K2, hoping for your great support!

I constantly guided us to this same simple idea:
# K2dlaPolaków – reach the clouds, reaching peaks reach the sky!

Jerzy Natkański, head of the summer expedition to K2

Support team of Polish climbers in the expedition to K2 and leave their mark on the top of dreams!

Before a group of tireless Polish climbers take winter – the most difficult challenges of high altitude – the summer of 2017 years will try to tame K2, taking a trial of strength against the historical making !

The aim of the summer expedition is entering the second summit of the world with a height of 8611 m above sea level and at the same time as the best preparation – including in terms of choice of the road – a winter storm on K2 .

Why is it so important for us?

Mountain top, as used to say about her, constantly (for now! :)) it is our national challenge. Not only in winter, when the conditions for climbing are horrendously difficult, but also in the summer! Then the weather is far more gracious to us, but raise funds for the expedition far harder. Therefore, once again we ask you to #HELP! I firmly believe that – just like a year ago – with your support we will be able to organize a summer expedition to the summit of the peak of dreams!

Why we fight for K2 for the Poles?

Watch the video and find out what about getting the K2 Poles say #Wielicki Krzysztof, Leszek Jerzy #Cichy and # Natkański

– After our success in the Himalayas Winter, Zawada thought of the Karakoram and of course – as Zawada – thought of the highest peak , ie K2 . It is the end of 1987. We set off on a journey (…) that lasted nearly four months. (…) We incurred a defeat, but gained new experiences. We knew that going back ! – says Krzyszt of Wielicki , the first conqueror of Everest in winter.

Schedule expedition to K2

Summer Preparatory trip – organized under the Polish Winter Himalayan Mountaineering them. Artur Hajzer 2016-2020 Polish Mountaineering Association – starts on 22 June 2017 year , but without your support ‘Himalayan Dream’ Poles may not come true! Helping, you can also achieve a noble goal, and what’s more – leave your mark on K2!

· June 22, 2017 – departure from Polish

· June 23, 2017 – arrival to Islamabad

· 24-25 June 2017 – drive to Skardu

· June 26, 2017 – transfer to Askole

· June 27 – July 3, 2017 – the caravan to the base under K2

· July 5, 2017 – start-up mountain

· 6-8 August 2017 – back to Skardu

· 9 August – departure from Islamabad to Polish

Route year expedition to K2

During the summer expedition to the K2 group of Polish climbers will climb the south-eastern pillar, the so-called. Basque road, which is also called by Cesena. It leads pillar between the road Kukuczka-Piotrowski, and collected Abruzzi – which Polish climbers tried to enter in 2016 – and connects to the ribs on the Abruzzi Arm between the so-called. Black Pyramid and the neck.

The database, which will commence climbers is situated at an altitude of 5150 m . From here the road leads through the camp 1 / 5900 m /, camp 2/6350 m /and camp 3/7000 m / up to Camp IV , which is scheduled for the so-called. ‘Arm’ / 8000 m / , where it will be the final attack on top .

The team – summer 2017

Summer expedition to K2 will be implemented under the leadership of George Natkańskiego.

All participants in this expedition mountaineers, who are members of the national team mountaineering Polish Mountaineering Association in 2017

Islamabad: Two climbers missing on a treacherous peak in northern Pakistan known as “Killer Mountain” are now presumed dead and the rescue operation has been called off, officials said on Saturday.

The two climbers, Alberto Zerain, a Spanish alpinist, and Mariano Galvan, an Argentinian national, went missing while attempting to summit the 8,125 meter peak, Nanga Parbat.

“The search and rescue operation for the two missing alpinists has been called off as a rescue team failed to locate them this morning,” Muhammad Iqbal, owner of Summit Karakorum, the tour operating company that had arranged the climb told AFP.

Karrar Haidri, spokesman of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, confirmed that the search and rescue operation had been called off and that the alpinists were presumed dead.

A total of 14 foreign climbers were attempting to summit Nanga Parbat this year when bad weather forced them to return to base camp last week.

The two missing climbers left base camp on June 19 but were holed up in their tent for three days at an altitude of 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) due to bad weather. They tried to summit again but lost contact with fellow climbers last on Friday.

The “Killer Mountain” Nanga Parbat earned its grisly nickname after more than 30 climbers died trying to conquer it before the first successful summit in 1953.

Northern Pakistan is a magnet for mountaineers and is home to some of the tallest mountains in the world, including K2 — at 8,611 metres, the world’s second highest peak, but often deemed a more challenging climb than the highest, Mount Everest.

Nestled between the western end of the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush mountains and the Karakoram range, the Gilgit-Baltistan region houses 18 of the world’s 50 highest peaks.

It is also home to three of the world’s seven longest glaciers outside the polar regions. Hundreds of its mountains have never been climbed.

Pakistan Youth Outreach (PYO), in collaboration with Karakorum Expeditions, proudly initiated national women winter expedition to an unnamed, unclimbed peak, for the first time in Pakistan’s mountaineering history. The National Women Winter Expedition was lead by the renowned and only female Mountaineer of Pakistan to summit Mt. Everest, Ms. Samina Baig.

The expedition was initially planned to 6050m Peak in the Shimshal Pamir region, known as “Mingligh Sar”; however, due to some logistic issues the plan was changed and decided to ascend an unnamed and unclimbed peak in the Boisom pass in Gojrave, Shimshal Valley (Upper Hunza, GilgitBaltistan). The peak was never climbed in the past even in the summers, however expedition in the winters is quite challenging and harshest weather conditions and never attempted.

This expedition was launched under the slogan of women empowerment, to encourage gender equality and unity amongst the youth/women across Pakistan. Women winter mountaineering is symbolic for breaking barriers and stereotypes that are prevalent for women in Pakistan, it is aimed to encourage young Pakistani women to pursue mountaineering as a career choice and embark on such challenging & unconventional outdoor sports endeavors.

The expedition campaign was announced on social media and women from all over Pakistan were invited to participate, with the plan to select one representative from each area, Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, KPK, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan. There were total four local girls finally selected from Pakistan and due to nature of the expedition to be one of its kind, two international women from USA and Norway also joined this historical event. International women participation enhanced cross culture understanding and unity and peace through outdoor sports, and showcased positive side of Pakistan around the world.

The women winter expedition was first of its kind in Pakistan’s outdoor and mountaineering history, as before commencing the expedition there was a weeklong extensive basic mountaineering camp at Malangudi Glacier Shimshal. The purpose of training camp was to guide, educate and train the female participants for the expedition and to improve their technical and emotional skills before embarking them on such serious and extreme conditions.

After the weeklong training, the team was all set to start the expedition to Mingligh Sar, however due to lack of availability of porters the plan was changed to next best available option of summit of an alternative unclimbed 5000m+ peak. At day first, starting from Shimshal village, after 5-6 hours continuous hike, the expedition’s first stop was at Zathgruben which is also world’s highest sports arena at 4,100m, and where the team acclimatized for a day. On the next day, the women team hiked to Vayn Sar Pass at 4,700m which was so far the highest point that any member of the women winter expedition team had ever summited.

At Zathgruben, one of the member named Aafia Younis suffered knee injury due to which she had to decide to leave the expedition. On day third, the rest of the team started their journey in high spirits & best of the health to the base camp, which is at 4,446m, and stayed there for 3 days during which they hiked in the surrounding area for acclimatization. Finally the day arrived for departure to High Camp, which was setup in Boisam Pass at around 5,000m. Finally four members named Bismah, Komal, Siv and Samina were able to make it to the high camp as rest of the two members named Ariana and Sadaf had suffered health & altitude issues. The weather conditions at the high camp were very severe with cold air & temperatures in the range of -35C-40C.

On the summit day, Samina Baig and Dr. Siv were fit to start the summit along with our high altitude guides Eid Muhammad, Gul Muhammad & Arshad Karim. Rest of the team had also suffered from altitude sickness. The 5 members summit push started at 9:30 am and in 6 hours at local time 18:30 pm, after continuous extreme vertical climb and combating harsh winter temperatures, Dr. Siv and Samina Baig had finally achieved the historical & momentous summit, which was recorded to be at a height of 5,600m.

The previously extreme winter conditions, which is a proud moment in the history of Pakistan’s mountaineering. Mohammed Eid who is an experienced high altitude guide and had also been part of K2 expedition & climbed till Camp 3, mentioned it to be a very tough and technical peak and equivalent to K2 Black pyramid in technical difficulty. The women expedition team under extreme winter conditions finally conquered the previously unclimbed & highly technical peak, which is a proud moment in the history of Pakistan’s mountaineering. The peak is proposed to be named as Koh-e-Zamiston or ‘Winter Peak’, to mark it’s significance of first ever summit in winter.

Under the leadership of Samina Baig, the women winter expedition has proved that there is a bright future for young Pakistani women in the field of mountaineering, and that they are capable of breaking barriers and setting new standards in this field. This expedition is just the beginning of many more successful endeavors to come, and Pakistan Youth Outreach along with Karakorum Expedition is working on such similar future expeditions/projects for women empowerment in the filed of mountaineering in Pakistan.

You may or may not have heard that there was a small(ish) 5.4 earthquake 19km or so from Namche Bazaar at around local time.

I would love to be able to say that everything is fine and that we are unscathed … but it is with a huge sense of grief and loss that I have to report that Thundu Sherpa has died.

Thundu and Ciaran were heading for the summit of Ama Dablam and were above Camp 3 making good progress when the earthquake occurred and caused them to be hit by some dislodged pieces of ice, both of them sustaining injuries.

Without going in to the details too much Ciaran was battered and bruised but sadly Thundu suffered a head injury that meant that he didn’t survive. They were climbing as a pair, a metre or so from each other and both of them were very unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Five minutes either way and it would have just been a close call.

Ciaran managed to raise the alarm by radio and we immediately called our agent in Kathmandu who mustered a helicopter.

Meanwhile Jon and Lakpa Onju, because of their respective localities at the time, arrived on the scene within an hour of the call and were able to assist as much as possible.

The helicopter arrived at Base Camp and then flew up to the site to assess what was going to be the best course of action. When the helicopter returned to Base Camp they stripped the doors off, emptied out any excess weight and got ready to perform a long line rescue operation. A crew member went up attached to the line and after some delicate manoeuvring at 6,300m was able to detach himself at the site and hook Ciaran on to the line. Ciaran was brought down to Base Camp where he was given some medical treatment for his various injuries and the helicopter returned back to the site to bring down the long line guy with Thundu. Jon and Lakpa Onju then made their way back down the mountain.

The people at Base Camp (both staff and group members alike) worked in an exemplary manner. Some volunteered to go up to Camp 1 and Camp 2 to be in place for other duties that needed tending to. There were people monitoring the radio stations, taking notes to keep a record of events, making tea and coffee for the helicopter crew, administering first aid and generally working together as a team. Suffice to say that now the dust has settled everyone is in a deep sense of shock and saddened by our loss.

Thundu leaves behind a wife and 2 boys, aged 8 and 14, who live in Kathmandu. Whilst there is a modicum of insurance available for the family it won’t get the children through the rest of their schooling. To that end I am putting out an appeal for donations, however small, so that the family can rest assured that they aren’t going to face financial hardship. If you are able to help then please go to www.justgiving.com/timmosedale and mark your donation ‘For Thundu.’

On a final note – I would prefer not to receive any comments to the effect that a Climbing Sherpa has died whilst Westerners are pursuing their dreams. Ama Dablam is a climbers mountain and all the people in my team are suitably well qualified by experience to be here. The Climbing Sherpas are not being used and abused in the duties that they perform, they are proud of the work that they do and have worked for my Sirdar for many many years forming a close knit team. This was a tragic accident as a result of an act of nature. We are surrounded by an amazing panorama of massive mountains and when the earthquake happened there weren’t multiple avalanches and landslides. There was one incident … and our team were sadly involved.

Pakistan is a land of vibrant local cultures and breathtaking sceneries. While there may be a lack of tourism in the past couple of years, some soulful adventurers find Pakistan to be fascinating and have written blogs about their exciting trips.

Many tourists fell in love with the Pakistani culture and natural beauty, and yes some of them have visited Pakistan more than once!

British adventurer, photographer, and blogger Will Hatton is in awe of the beauty of Pakistan. He has visited Pakistan and shared his amazing experience here on his blog ‘The Broke Backpacker’.

Will Hatton be an audacious and fun loving traveler chose to lead a different life, unlike most tourists, he is a backpacker. He travels across countries with nothing more than a backpack filled with necessary clothing, his electronics, and a few bucks.

Recently, Will traveled to Pakistan and after skimming through Lahore and Islamabad, he headed towards north to explore his ultimate love – mountains.

Describing his intentions to visit Pakistan, Will writes that sadly the European media has always portrayed Pakistan as a dump, home of terrorists and hell on earth. However, his Pakistani friends back at home exhibited just the opposite conduct. That’s why he decided to find out the truth about Pakistan and show to the world what a gem Pakistan really is.

In an interview to Jovago, the adventurer was asked to describe Pakistan in three words to which he responded:

Illuminating, unforgettable, totally god-damn unique.

Talking about Pakistani people, he writes in his blog that Pakistanis are the most fun-loving and hospitable people he has ever come across. Pakistanis can’t help but take care of their guests and get them addicted to tea.

Wherever I went, I was greeted by friendly faces and incredibly helpful people… The Pakistani people are very generous and you will be plied with ridiculous amounts of free food and chai.

Little does Will know Pakistanis, as Muslims, feel honored taking care of their guests and believe that guests bring ‘barkat’ to a home. (Dictionaries translate ‘barkat’ to blessing, but really there is no word that truly captures the essence of this concept).

Even after being fed with limitless tea, Will tells his favorite Pakistani cuisine to be lassi. “I’m a sucker for lassis.” Maybe Will has some Punjabi blood in him. After all his favorite city of Pakistan is Lahore, even though he spent most of his time in the north. He talks about Lahore in his blog;

The Paris of Pakistan: Lahore is one of my favorite cities in the world. The colors, the sounds, the smells, the vibrant-in-your-face-ness of it all is best experienced on the back of a motorbike; make friends with some locals and get them to show you around!

Will Hatton, the traveler and photographer, loves Pakistan for its opportunities of nearly every type of adventure. From rocky mountains to snowy peaks to stormy desserts, Pakistan offers everything to her lovers. He said

This is a land of towering peaks and colorful traditions, of ancient fortresses and friendly people. I’m a bit of a history buff and Pakistan is simply heaving with fascinating historical sites as well as some of the best trekking in the world.

Traveling in Pakistan is very cheap and fun according to Will and that’s make traveling on the budget really easy. Financing in Pakistan is super easy for foreigners as:

Pakistanis are so damn hospitable that it’s hard to pay for anything

The mountains and northern beauty of Pakistan cast a spell on Will. He started with Gilgit and made his way to the Fairy Meadows. He narrated his experience that some of the police officers there are friendly enough to guide your tour.

He then explored the ‘jewel of Hunza’, Karimabad where he was stunned by the Baltit fort. Moving further he discovered the fascinating glaciers at Gulkin and the bluest lake in the world – the Abbottabad lake.

He visited the highest border – Khunjerab pass, Skardu, up to the base camp of K2. He also made it to Chitral and enjoyed among the people of Kalash and their colorful festivals.

Throughout his trip, Will was amazed by the beauty of the country and the hospitality of people. He holds that Pakistan is nothing like as depicted in the media. Women are also deeply respected and many people come forward to help in case of a problem.

Pakistan is one of the safest countries I have ever visited and is packed with friendly and inquisitive individuals who are always happy to meet a backpacker. The extremely helpful army and the sometimes helpful police will always keep an eye out for foreigners and they are absolutely everywhere.

Will describes himself as an on-road writer and photographer. His experiences have also made him a “part-time farmer, full-time charmer.” Who is always down for a good mountain or a cheesecake.

This guy has been traveling since 9 years on an extreme budget and in these years he has tried to learn the meaning of life and enjoy it to the fullest. Although he is from the UK, but is hardly ever in Europe. Instead, he has traveled more than seventy countries, all on a budget.

He manages to finance his trips by his famous travel blog ‘The Broke Backpacker’ but mostly he does odd jobs like farming during traveling. Will usually travels via hitch-hiking in a country making friends along the way.

Will Hatton travels to engage with new people. In his opinion, travel gives him an opportunity to meet new people from different cultures and reinvent himself. Every time he meets a new person, he tries to become a happier, friendlier and more exciting version of himself.

Travelers like Will Hatton are trying to bring the bright side of Pakistan, highlighting it to the world what an incredible country Pakistan really is. Pakistan may her issues but Pakistanis make sure their guests have the best possible experience.

They were last seen almost two weeks ago

Helicopters began searching on Saturday for two Americans who went missing while attempting to climb one of Pakistan’s highest peaks.

Kyle Dempster, 33, and Scott Adamson, 34, began climbing the north face of Ogre II, near the Choktoi Glacier in northern Pakistan, on Aug. 21, according to a GoFundMe page established to support their rescue. The men, both from Utah, were last seen on Aug. 22, a day before a snow storm hit the mountain. Dempster and Adamson had originally planned on spending five days climbing and descending the mountain.

The search-and-rescue effort began on Sunday, but stormy weather made it impossible for Pakistani military helicopters to join the search until Saturday, CNN reported, citing a family spokesperson.

A U.S.-based rescue group also planned to send two helicopters to help with the search, NBC News reported.

The pair had tried climbing the same peak last year, but ended the trip after Adamson fell and broke his leg, according to CNN.

MIRAGRAM, Pakistan — With its neat stone walls and paths, bountiful tomato and wheat fields and miniature sheep that graze right up to doorsteps, this picturesque village has an air of timelessness. But the 110 families who live here only have to glance out their doors to see that their irrigated idyll may not last forever.

For generations, the glacier clinging to Miragram Mountain, a peak that towers above the village, has served as a reservoir for locals and powered myriad streams throughout Pakistan’s scenic Chitral Valley. Now, though, the villagers say that their glacier — and their way of life — is in retreat.

“We worry it may even vanish and there will be no drinking water,” said Abdul Nasir, 60, pointing up at the 19,000-foot mountaintop streaked with thin, patchy snow. “Every year, it’s melting.”

With 7,253 known glaciers, including 543 in the Chitral Valley, there is more glacial ice in Pakistan than anywhere on Earth outside the polar regions, according to various studies. Those glaciers feed rivers that account for about 75 percent of the stored-water supply in the country of at least 180 million.

But as in many other parts of the world, researchers say, Pakistan’s glaciers are receding, especially those at lower elevations, including here in the Hindu Kush mountain range in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Among the causes cited by scientists: diminished snowfall, higher temperatures, heavier summer rainstorms and rampant deforestation.

To many, the 1,000-square-mile Chitral Valley has become a case study of what could await the rest of the world if climate change accelerates, turning life-supporting mountains into new markers of human misery.

“It’s already happening here, and my thinking is, in the coming years it will just go from bad to worse,” said Bashir Ahmed Wani, a Pakistani forestry specialist with the Asian Development Bank.

A view of Tirich Mir, at 25,289 feet the highest peak of the Hindu Kush range in Pakistan’s upper Chitral Valley. Most of the mountains in the region are 22,000 feet or less, and the glaciers at those elevations are under increasing stress amid changes in the climate, researchers say. (Insiya Syed /For The Washington Post)

Over the past six years, the Chitral Valley has also experienced three major floods that many Pakistani scientists attribute to climate change. The floodwaters killed more than 50 people and stranded hundreds of thousands while undercutting a once-vibrant tourist industry still struggling to rebound after Sept. 11, 2001.

While climate change is a factor in the region’s calamities, the valley has also come to symbolize the way a poorly educated populace can make the situation worse, creating a cycle of hardship. Its glaciers offer a stark example.

The valley’s population has soared — from 106,000 in 1950 to 600,000 today — and most residents get just two to four hours of electricity a day. Without reliable refrigeration, residents turn to vendors hawking chunks of the valley’s shrinking snowpack.

Every day, they say, scores of these entrepreneurs drive five to seven hours to the mountain peaks, where they hack into the glaciers — or scoop up the pre-glacial snow — and load the haul into their jeeps and trucks. Back in the valley, they shovel the snow and ice into shopping bags and sell it for 50 cents a bag.

“There are no fans, no refrigerators working, so I will store this for cooler water and then use it for drinking,” said Ubaid Ureh, 46, as he held two dripping bags.

Mohammad Idrees,11, eats ice that has been hacked from the mountain peaks by vendors and offered for sale along a road in the Chitral Valley last month. (Insiya Syed /For The Washington Post)

Hameed Ahmed Mir, a local biodiversity expert who has worked for the United Nations, said that one cubic yard of ice weighs almost a ton — enough to supply four to seven families with drinking water for several days — and one vehicle can carry three to four tons of snow or ice. “Then multiply that by 200 vehicles per day.”

Khalil Ahmed, a former project manager for the U.N.-supported Glacial Lake Outburst Floods Project, said Pakistani law does not make it clear whether the government or the public owns the country’s vast glacial reservoirs.

“We are trying to initiate a dialogue with the local people, but these are poor people,” he said, noting that glaciers in the neighboring territory of Gilgit-Baltistan are also being sold off.

Other scientists play down the threat, saying there are so many glaciers in Pakistan that it’s like taking water from an ocean. But even they admit that the sight of desperate families waiting to buy snow underscores the challenges facing this valley.

Ghulam Rasul, head of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, said the country’s weather patterns have shifted dramatically over the past two decades.

When 30-year temperature averages from 1961 to 1990 are compared with those from 1981 to 2010, temperatures in the northern third of Pakistan, where the glaciers are located, increased by 1.2 degrees Celsius, Rasul said.

Summer snow lines on Pakistan’s mountains have also crept up an average of 3,395 feet since 1981, he added. And the number of glacial lakes — which form when melting ice gets locked up in or around a glacier — has jumped from 2,420 a decade ago to 3,044 today, according to a recent study.

[Life in a Pakistani village so remote, kings once banished prisoners to it]

Equally alarming, Rasul said, the annual South Asia monsoon is growing more dynamic as temperatures spike over land and clash with cooler ocean waters. Now, instead of the late summer monsoon affecting mainly southern and eastern Pakistan, it has also been pumping deluges over the mountains.

“I believe this is an impact of global warming,” Rasul said. “If this continues, the glaciers will be melting at a fast rate, producing glacial lakes — and the lakes will burst,” triggering disasters.

The weather changes have not seriously threatened the ice packs in Pakistan’s northernmost regions, where five of the world’s 14 highest peaks — all topping 26,000 feet — are located.

Nizam Uddim, about 52, points to the site of the house that he lost, along with his 4-year-old daughter, during flash floods in the Chitral Valley village of Reshun last year. (Insiya Syed /For The Washington Post)

Some researchers think that the glaciers in the Karakorum and Himalayan mountains in Gilgit-Baltistan may even expand as weather patterns shift and more precipitation falls over the highest peaks as snow. Many of Pakistan’s glaciers are also covered in silt and debris, which helps insulate them.

But farther south in the Chitral Valley, where most mountains are no higher than 22,000 feet, there is little doubt that the glaciers are under stress, researchers say.

In the village of Reshun last July, a 20-foot wall of water crashed over 126 houses and killed a 4-year-old girl “on a very hot day,” said Azmat, 19, who uses only one name.

“We resided here for at least the last 200 years, and we never faced any kind of flood like this,” said the girl’s father, Nizam Uddim, who estimates that he is 52.

Siraj ul-Mulk, the 71-year-old owner of the Hindu Kush Heights Hotel in Chitral, has been trekking in a different part of northern Chitral since he was a young man.

“It used to take me a whole day to cross the glacier,” he said. “Now, it will take me two hours.”

But just as in the broader global debate over climate change, some Pakistani researchers remain skeptical that warmer weather is causing Chitral’s glaciers to melt.

Arshad Abbasi, a water and energy expert, said Pakistanis alone are responsible for their plight.

He noted that tree roots stabilize the ground that the glaciers bind to — and that Pakistan has retained just 2 to 5 percent of its tree cover. Even worse, he said, goat herders, tourists and even the country’s army are allowed to trek over them.

“People say global warming, but in fact, it’s human activity” that most threatens the glaciers, said Abbasi, who has studied the effect of Pakistani and Indian military encampments on the shrinking Siachen Glacier in the Himalayan range near the disputed Kashmir region.

Local activists agree that lax environmental standards are magnifying the danger. Inayatullah Faizi, an expert on local culture, noted that much of Chitral’s garbage and sewage is dumped directly into streams and the Chitral River — another reason residents buy snow from the glacier.

Aisha Khan, head of the Islamabad-based Mountain and Glacier Protection Organization, said a huge conservation campaign is needed to combat public ignorance. She noted that many mountain-area families still try to make glaciers grow by “fertilizing them,” cutting ice from a dark, debris-clogged glacier (male) and setting it next to a clear one (female).

Still, there are signs that younger Pakistanis, even in remote places, are realizing what is at stake.

Beekeepers collect honey last month from hives they have set up by a roadside in the Chitral Valley. (Insiya Syed /For The Washington Post)

In Sonoghur, a small village north of Miragram that was devastated by a glacial lake flood in 2007, a middle-aged man began telling a reporter that India and Israel are responsible for glaciers melting because they don’t want overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan “to grow and prosper.”

But Amir Shahzaib, 17, spoke up.

“We don’t believe that, and our new generation wants to take care of the earth,” he said, adding that he and his friends were trying to get older residents to stop throwing plastic bottles in waterways.

They can’t do it all, he added.

“We are just partly responsible for climate change,” Shahzaib said of his village. “Mostly, the city people are responsible.”